Marginalized at Yahoo When Marissa Mayer Became CEO

Mobile ad network Millennial Media has hired Mollie Spilman, a former Yahoo marketing executive, as its first chief marketing officer. Ms. Spilman's first day at Millennial, which went public in March, is tomorrow.

Mollie Spilman

Ms. Spilman held the chief marketing officer position at Yahoo for three months, but was replaced by new Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer in August. In an interview, Millennial Media CEO Paul Palmieri implied that his company was in talks with Ms. Spilman prior to her being replaced at Yahoo.

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Ms. Spilman previously ran marketing in the Americas for Yahoo for the last two years. Prior to that , she led global b-to-b marketing efforts at Yahoo and also worked as CMO at the ad network Advertising.com, both pre- and post-acquisition by AOL.

At Millennial, Ms. Spilman will be asked to develop a more cohesive strategy around the company's marketing tactics, most specifically around product launches. Mr. Palmieri, who previously played a big role in marketing strategy, said it was critical for the company to get a chief marketer in place ahead of some imminent, big, product launches.

"As you transition to being more of a public company...you really need somebody who's going to program-ize all of the different things we've done in marketing, but also really add horsepower to product launches," he said.

Ms. Spilman will also lead the company's business-development division.

Millennial Media is second only to Google in mobile display market share among ad networks, according to a recent eMarketer estimate.